Condom Programs Don't Spur Sex, Study Says

Advocates for AIDS-prevention programs last week said they were
counting on a new study to bolster efforts to make condoms widely
available to students in schools.

But school officials in Chicago and New York City suggested that
those advocates are likely to be disappointed.

The study, published last week in the Sept. 30 issue of the
American Journal of Public Health, compares the rates of condom
use and sexual activity among students in New York City, which offers
condoms in public high schools, and in Chicago, which generally does
not.

The researchers found, contrary to critics' predictions, that making
condoms available in school did not make teenagers more likely to have
sex.

But ready access to condoms did prompt more students to use them,
the report concludes. Students who were considered to be at highest
risk of contracting AIDS--those who had three or more sexual partners
within the preceding six months--were even more likely to have used
condoms.

"This is one more study--and a very significant one--saying that
school-based condom availability works," said Kent Klindera, the
associate director of HIV/sexually-transmitted-disease education for
Advocates for Youth, a Washington nonprofit group. "I would hope this
study is going to help school condom availability in New York City and
a lot of places."

Controversy over New York's condom-availability program was a factor
in the ouster of Schools Chancellor Joseph A. Fernandez in 1992. He
launched the program a year earlier as part of an AIDS-prevention
effort.

Since then, supporters contend, the program has been progressively
weakened. Most recently, Chancellor Rudy F. Crew in 1995 ended
classroom demonstrations of condom use and required schools to
establish separate resource rooms, operated by teacher volunteers,
where students can pick up condoms and request a
demonstration.

No Policy Changes

So far, school officials in both New York and Chicago are not
planning to step up efforts to distribute condoms in schools as a
result of the study.

"This is but one small issue that the chancellor and this board of
education do not want to usurp the rest of their priorities," said J.D.
LaRock, a spokesman for the New York district.

"We do not look at one study and try to develop policy on that,"
said Lula Ford, a school leadership-development officer for the Chicago
schools.

In that Midwestern city, students get lessons on abstinence, condom
use, and AIDS prevention in middle school and high school--just as they
do in New York. But condoms are available only at the four Chicago high
schools that have privately supported health clinics on campus.

"At no time are we going to make condoms available on a blanket
basis to all students," Ms. Ford said.

Providing Cover

Financed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the study is part of
a three-year evaluation of New York City's condom-availability program.
The six authors are: Sally Guttmacher of the department of health
studies at New York University; Lisa Lieberman of Healthy Concepts, a
New City, N.Y., nonprofit firm; David Ward of the department of health
administration and policy, Medical University of South Carolina,
Charleston; Nick Freudenberg of the Center on AIDS, Drugs, and
Community Health, Hunter College, New York; Alice Radosh of the Academy
for Educational Development, New York; and Don Des Jarlais of the
Chemical Dependency Institute, Beth Israel Medical Center, also in New
York.

The research, conducted in 1994, involved 7,000 randomly selected
students in 12 New York high schools and a demographically similar
group of 6,000 students from 10 Chicago schools. Half of the racially
mixed groups were boys and half were girls. In both cities, the
students were initiating sexual activity at similar ages and engaging
in sexual activity at similar rates. For example, in both New York and
Chicago, 47 percent of new students and 60 percent of the students who
had been in high school a year or more in both cities reported being
sexually active.

But in New York, 61 percent of the students engaging in sex said
they had used a condom the last time they had intercourse, compared
with 56 percent of the sexually active teenagers in Chicago.
Researchers characterized that difference as "modestly significant" and
cause for considering school-based condom-distribution programs as a
way to lower urban teenagers' risk of contracting AIDS or other
sexually transmitted diseases.

New York students who had been in high school longer were even more
likely to use condoms.

For his part, Mr. Fernandez, New York City's former chancellor, said
he felt vindicated by the findings.

"Perhaps, for superintendents that were afraid because of what
happened to me, this report will give them some cover so they can
address the issue," said Mr. Fernandez, who is now a consultant in
Pinellas County, Fla.

Read more about the Advocates for Youth Peer Education Program,
a cooperative venture with the federal Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention designed to combat HIV infection and sexually transmitted
diseases among adolescents.

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